


Childing Autumn

by Anonymous



Category: Dead Poet's Society (1989)
Genre: Other, Post-Canon, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-19
Updated: 2008-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The autumn was full of firsts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childing Autumn

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [14 Valentines](http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines), and for KelseyML's request in the New Year's Resolution challenge at [Yuletide](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org). With thanks to [Berne](http://www.ragnell.org/berne/blog) for editing and encouragement. Title from _A Midsummer's Night Dream_.

Autumn is for dying. The world dries to a husk, turns brown and crinkled at the edges, and every step we take smashes something underfoot.

Or so he had always believed.

It turned out that autumn was for glimpses through suddenly-stark and open vistas, for finding the seeds that had been held in abeyance in the cold earth of his heart. Heat rushed through his veins like steam through radiator pipes when Neil bumped his shoulder for the first time.

The autumn was full of firsts.

First day at Welton: "Goodbye, son. Make us proud." And "Write often, Todd, you must write often to Mother," and the worn treads on the staircase in the dormitory, the curling carpet in the hallway.

First glimpse of Neil: the hank of black hair hanging in his left eye, the narrow lower lip, the way he turned away from Todd as he introduced himself.

First time Neil sprawled out on his bed: the moment after his parents left and all the tension seeped out of his body as he slung his jacket over the back of the desk chair. "Thought they'd never leave," he said, and flung one arm over his head on Todd's pillow, shirt sliding up to expose a shadowed rib.

First all-nighter: physics turning out to be not challenging nor a call to arms but the discipline destined to kick his ass out of New England and clear across the country to California where there were girls blonder than Chris. He kept his aching eyes focused on the cramped lines of equations instead of thinking about how he didn't like blondes, didn't want a girl with hair that smelled like strawberries instead of mint and Brylcreem.

First cup of coffee: the morning after the first all-nighter, Neil telling him to add sugar and swallow fast, "it's bitter," he said, warning Todd, but Todd only smiled. "I like it," he said, not adding, _because it is bitter and because it is my heart_.

First time not turning in an assignment: Mr. Keating looking at him, knowing how the space behind his ribs was fluttering, and smiling slow and cruel and understanding, and then pushing back, pushing him higher.

First time being included automatically: Hearing Steven saying as he came into breakfast one never-to-be-forgotten Tuesday, "Where's Todd? Neil, did you lose our Todd?" with an undercurrent that Todd shouldn't have been able to recognize as real affection, but somehow did.

First time touching Neil deliberately: Saturday morning, Neil coming back from his weekly phone call to his parents white-faced and jittery, breaking pencils and running his hands through his hair. Todd was sitting cross-legged on his bed, and when Neil paced by him, he reached out and gripped his wrist. "Sit down," he said. "You're m-making me sea—sea-sick."

First time gasping for breath from a poem: Baudelaire ringing clear in his blood and bones, echoing inside him, filling up all the hollow spaces that even Neil's kindness and Charlie's noise and Steven's sly innuendo hadn't reached. The serifs on the letters dug into his heart, and the punctuation clogged his throat.

First time stealing food off Neil's plate without asking permission: beef and noodles was what the kitchens called version eight of "pale brown goo with slippery grey mush," but there were real carrot pieces in it, and Neil didn't like carrots. Todd saw that he was absorbed in Charlie's assessment of the crew team's prospects on Saturday, and began stabbing the chunks of overcooked vegetable without bothering to interrupt.

First time watching Neil sleep: a bitterly cold night and the radiator kicked on with such a snap that Todd jerked awake, thrashing for a moment before the plummeting sensation in his throat faded, and then lay there, aware only of the scratchiness of the blanket on his ankles and the air in his chest for a long moment. Then, suddenly, his eyes adjusted to the milky darkness, and Neil's face, dark arcs of eyelashes and the plane of his cheek, swam into focus across three feet of empty space. How long he watched the minute shifts of Neil's face, he wasn't sure, but he didn't complain about the sand under his eyelids or weighing at his temples the next day.

First discovery of the freckle next to Neil's eye: the second Society meeting, when they were a little more sure that they could get away with it, that they would not be missed, and consequently calmer, attention closing in the cave like curtains, instead of clinging to the last leaves on the oaks outside. They left, overtired and stiff from the chill ground, Neil and Todd the last ones out, and Neil stumbled. Todd caught his elbow and felt the shock of weight against his palm; Neil twisted his head to smile, to thank him, but his face went still when he saw the expression on Todd's features. "Oh," he whispered, and the shock of weight became the bearing of Neil's body as he leaned in, deliberately letting Todd hold him. First Todd only felt the damp warmth of Neil's breath, and then he felt it sting his throat and his lungs and his thoughts wide open.

It wasn't until the snow fell that Todd began to accumulate lasts, although he did not know it.

In his memory, that autumn stayed lit pale gold with sunrise, and the wind off the river, strong enough to steal his breath and leave him gasping. He would stumble into the dormitory with his fingers stinging from cold and his chest blown wide open; Neil's grin was like ginger beer as he scrubbed his fingers through his recalcitrant hair—sharp and sweet all at once. That he had not known all those unfurling buds of hope would crumbled with the blasting winter did not mean they had been any the less precious, or any the less alive.

The next autumn, Todd did not anticipate anything but phantom warmth and happiness.

But autumn has a way of fooling everyone, of confounding belief.

  
  



End file.
